


Mountain Ash.

by Jackmerlin



Category: The Marlows - Antonia Forest
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 06:17:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11053050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackmerlin/pseuds/Jackmerlin
Summary: Rowan unexpectedly meets an old acquaintance.





	Mountain Ash.

**Author's Note:**

> The set-up to this story refers back to both my ‘Ginty in Ireland’ and my ‘Nicola and Philip’ story. It needs a bit of Forestian time-warp magic for both stories to co-exist as they were set in different time periods, but it doesn’t really matter as this story could take place almost anytime - the attitudes to homosexuality expressed at one point in the story are more typical of the earlier time period, but not unknown in the later. As far as internal time-frames go, this is set about ten years after the events of ‘The Importance Of Elsewhere‘, at the end of which Rowan was handing the farm over to Peter, and had met a boyfriend on a skiing holiday.  
> But even the scarily competent, sure-of-herself Rowan may not have known exactly what she wanted at the age of eighteen……….

Rowan carried her hot chocolate carefully up to her grandly named ‘suite’ of rooms, an upturned saucer over the top of the mug. She did have a kettle in her room, but hot chocolate made by the hotel kitchen with real chocolate and whipped cream beat anything instant she could make herself. Especially since she had run out of English tea bags. Ann was the one who used to regularly send her packets of tea in the post, but Ann was now in some god-forsaken part of Africa, where she too was presumably missing proper tea - and much else besides - but would no doubt regard any sense of deprivation as a willing offering.  
Her suite of rooms consisted of a decent bedroom leading into a small bathroom, with a sort of big lobby at the entrance. This contained a table where she could work and eat, and a big leather chair. The leather armchair was a treasured possession. Her friend Anna had located it for her when she chose to stay in these rooms rather than take advantage of one of the staff chalets that became available as one moved up the ranks in longevity or seniority. It was a ‘man’s’ chair really, extra big with wide armrests and built very upright, covered in worn but beautifully soft leather.  
Rowan sank into the chair, perching her mug on the armrest. The room was tidy and bare, a few folders of paperwork on the table, and no personal ornament other than the collage of photos on a pin board above the table. Rowan gazed at them now, unseeingly, as her mind ran over the next day’s routines.  
The photos were only there really to impress upon any visitors to the room that she was not such a lone wolf as she seemed. The photos proclaimed to the world (well, the cleaners and the occasional workmate) that Rowan Marlow belonged to a big, happy family, in which weddings and parties were happening all the time. In truth most of the photos were from weddings, simply because that was when people were walking around armed with cameras.  
There was the big photo that her mother had sent her from Ginty and Tom’s wedding, the one that had appeared in ‘Country Life’ and ‘Horse and Hound‘. The bride and groom were charmingly posed under the church’s arched gateway, wreathed in flowers and smiles. Rowan had not gone to that wedding, much to Mrs Marlow’s annoyance. She had had to work quite hard to come up with an excuse for not going, as the wedding was taking place long after the skiing season was over. She had to admit that Ginty had turned things around after the initial worry and annoyance she had caused; but she would be far more likely to go _on_ being successful without Rowan’s grudging and possibly ill-wishing eye on her.

She _had_ gone back home for Peter‘s wedding, and that had been a proper country affair. The church had been filled not just with local landowners, young farmers and Wendy’s horsey friends, but also farm workers, carpenters, photographers, blacksmiths - all the many and varied people Peter had made friends with from the local area. It had idly occurred to her that if she had stayed these could have been _her_ potential wedding guests, _her_ friends, _her_ scene. Except that she didn’t have Peter’s casual ability to make friends with anyone; she was too quick to spot the flaw or the oddity in people and then she couldn’t be bothered, which meant there were very few people that she really counted as friends at all.

Nicola’s wedding had been both fun and stylish. It had been held in London, which should have made the journey easy for Rowan - just the flight, then the train from the airport into London. Only there had been an annoying delay with the flight which meant Rowan had only just got to the church in time; the groom already waiting at the altar as she slipped into a seat at the back. She found herself seated next to Patrick Merrick, who had also arrived too late to sit next to his parents in a full pew nearer the front.  
She was reminded of the Christmas play that they had watched together, many years ago, but this time they shared none of the easy rapport of that occasion. He acknowledged her cheerful greeting politely enough, but then stared gloomily at the order of service as the music started and the bride entered. Nicola, catching Rowan’s eye, grinned cheerfully in a very un-blushing-bride-like way; she looked absolutely stunning, Rowan thought, impressed. Maybe Patrick was feeling displaced; there had been a time when everyone had assumed that Nicola might end up marrying him. Just as, she supposed, everyone had assumed she would marry Denis when she left the farm and followed him back to the ski resort in Switzerland.  
She had never met Nicola’s intended, now husband, before. She threaded her way through the congratulatory heaps of people outside the church after the ceremony, to introduce herself and say all the usual things. Nicola was being talked to by an older man - Jan’s doctor father perhaps, so Jan stepped forward to make the introduction. Philip Scott shook her hand politely, but said, “Another sister. You must be the bossy one.”  
Jan shot him a very sisterly look, but Rowan was amused rather than annoyed. Partly because he had such a disarming smile, partly because she no longer cared what people thought of her, and partly because being bossy had got her into a well-paid job with decent holidays. So she smiled and said drily, “Oh dear. What _have_ they been telling you?”  
That wasn’t the most disconcerting moment of the day. That came later, when she was chatting to Jan at the reception, and that dark-haired friend of Nicola’s from school came over bringing Jan a fresh glass of wine. She joined them with an easy assumption of familiarity which seemed curious to Rowan, until it suddenly hit her that the two of them were _together_.  
She wondered later why this had jolted her. Not because it was Jan, whom she had never known that well and not really thought about since school, until family letters announced that Nick was going out with Janice Scott’s brother. Perhaps it was just that it flagged up different possibilities in life.  
The other odd thing at that wedding was Giles being particularly obnoxious. He very nearly provoked the best man into punching him; before Rowan hitched her arm through his and towed him away. Fortunately, it happened at the tail end of the evening, after the bride and groom had been waved off, and parents and elderly guests had already retired. But Giles had been snippy and snarky all evening. She wondered if it was really just that he hadn’t taken to Nicola’s choice of husband, or was it that seeing the younger sister who had once idolised him grow up and away from him was making him feel old? As it did Rowan if she stopped to think about it, with the big Three Oh coming up.

 

The last picture squeezed onto her board was a small one of Denis, left there out of a mixture of gratitude and friendship. They hadn’t been friends, not for a long time after their split, but since he’d met his new girlfriend, now wife, they’d been able to meet and be genuinely friendly on the odd occasions their paths crossed.  
Their relationship had worked while it was a long-distance relationship. They had spent the summer months working at Trennels, then she had come for several short skiing trips every winter. She enjoyed her own space when he wasn’t there; he was charming and intelligent and good company when they were together.  
It was when she had moved out here to be with him permanently that things had stopped being _right_. She had become an increasingly competent skier and trained to become an instructor; firstly for the beginners, but then working up the levels. She loved skiing; it had all the speed and exhilaration of the best sort of riding, but with the advantage that one was entirely reliant on oneself, rather than trusting a four-legged beast to put its feet in the right places. She even learned to ski-jump; that was when she first met Anna who was both a competitive skier and a coach.  
At first she ignored the gradual realisation that she was finding the skiing _way_ more exciting than having sex. It was natural after all that the initial euphoria of the relationship would wear off. But what she couldn’t ignore was the stark fact that she didn’t want what Denis so clearly did - to be married, and to have children. Too late, she realised that she had escaped the trap that Trennels had become only to put her head into another trap. For all his charm and intelligence, Denis seemed to have a boringly traditional view of their future - that she should be a bored wife and mother, waiting for him to come home and make boring love to her every night.  
Perhaps Denis saw the writing on the wall, perhaps he just wanted to be with someone enthusiastic, but he saved the situation - and his own pride - by letting her walk in and find him in bed with one of the chalet girls. And once she had dusted herself off and realised that it was only her pride that was hurt, she knew that she would be forever grateful to him: for being her launch pad away from the farm, and for inadvertently showing her the life that she did _not_ want. Which meant that she could belatedly start looking for the life that she _did_ want.  
She made a clean break and applied for a job in a different ski resort. Her natural authority and organisational skills meant that she soon found herself mostly in charge of the school groups that came on skiing trips. Her day was spent partly in logistical organisation, and partly in actual teaching, and she knew she was good at both. She spent her long summer holidays travelling, mostly back-packing, although she had spent one summer (the year of Ginty’s wedding) working at a summer camp in America - a never-to-be-repeated experience.  
She was currently pondering where to go this year; Anna had suggested she visit her home on the Dalmatian coast. It certainly looked beautiful in the photos Anna had shown her…

 

She was roused with a start from her thoughts by the sound of screams - a frantic yelling, that had her out of her chair in an instant and running down the corridor.  
“You, stop there!” she yelled instinctively at two teen-aged figures seemingly sneaking away from the scene of the crime. Responding out of habit to the ‘teacher voice’ they halted reluctantly, two girls with guilty faces.  
The cries had turned to a hysterical sobbing, which slowly subsided as Rowan approached the open door of a bedroom. She glanced in and sized up the scene in a moment. A girl in the bed with the sheets pulled tightly right up to her neck, pressed closely up to the headboard, with folded knees. She was obviously trying to stay as far away as possible from the trouser-less teenage boy stood in bewilderment at the bottom of the bed.  
Seeing authority in the shape of Rowan appear, the boy clearly wanted to make a break for it, but she was blocking the doorway. “Stay there,” she snarled. “And put your bloody clothes on.”  
No-one had ever disobeyed Rowan when she used that tone of voice, and a teenage boy with no pants on wasn’t going to be the first to try. He had to stop using his hands as fig leaves in order to pick up his trousers, and he did so in a shuffling, bent over fashion, trying and failing to hide as much as possible.  
“It wasn’t meant to be _her_ ,” he gasped in near tearful panic. Catching sight of the two girls in the doorway, he said “Those bitches! It was supposed to be Daisy, _they_ said!”  
“Get in here,” Rowan ordered them. The worst sort of teenage girls, dripping with eye make-up and bitchiness, they shot her a sulky, ’who are _you_ to talk to _us_ ’ sort of stare.  
“You’d better start telling me what’s happened here,” Rowan told them. “Because what it looks like to me right now is attempted rape and two accessories to the crime.”  
The boy was visibly terrified now and started gabbling frantically. “They told me Daisy was waiting for me. They said I had to come to this room and creep in and she’d be in bed waiting for me.”  
Rowan eyed him. “You didn’t think that was a bit of an odd way to arrange things?”  
He couldn’t have wilted any further under her gaze. “Hmm. I expect the message just bypassed your _brain_ completely.”  
The girl under the sheets had fallen completely silent. She kept rubbing the top of the sheet over her eyes to wipe away the tears that were now treacherously sliding down her face. Rowan didn’t recognise any of the kids, they must be from the groups that had checked in on her day off.  
“We need your teachers. Either of you know where they’ll be?” she asked the two onlookers.  
“In the bar probably. Flirting with Mr Goring,” one of them said, in the dismissive voice with which children refer to not-much-liked or respected teachers.  
Rowan chose the other girl to go; she seemed more frightened and more likely to obey. “I want whoever’s in charge of him, and whoever’s supposed to be in charge of you. And bloody fast!” The girl ran.  
Rowan sighed, waiting. Temporarily ignoring the one in the bed, she asked the remaining girl, “Who is your teacher anyway?”  
The girl told her. Which meant that Rowan had at least two minutes warning.  
Ms. L Sanger, Head of PE at the exclusive Sherington Ladies’ College, wondering anxiously what those awful girls had done now, had absolutely no warning at all.

 

There was a silence so long that the three miserable teenagers, sensing an adult tension in the air, stared curiously at both Rowan and Lois.  
Rowan had an instant snapshot impression of an older Lois. The thin, charmingly attractive girl’s face had become just a lean woman’s face. She looked rather older than she actually was, scrawny and haggard, thought Rowan unkindly, with faint lines of discontent etched in her features.  
“It’s - it’s you,” stammered Lois eventually.  
“It is indeed,” replied Rowan, with rather a gleeful grimace. Lois looked utterly winded.  
“We can do the joyful reunion later,” Rowan told her. “This is a serious situation. I suggest we get them each to write down a statement of what happened before they get to talk to each other.”  
“What - what’s happened?” Lois managed.  
“Two of your charming pupils seemed to have thought it was a great idea to trick this poor dumb ass into molesting -” Rowan was going to say ‘this poor girl’ but realised in time that she was probably already feeling humiliated enough and changed mid-sentence to “another of your pupils.”  
Lois turned unwillingly to the girl who was stood slumped against the wall. “Is this true?” she asked sharply, trying to regain some control of both herself and the situation.  
“Christ, we were only having a _laugh_ ,” said the girl, scornfully, all but rolling her eyes; until she suddenly met Rowan’s Medusa stare and instantly became stonily silent.  
Rowan turned to the girl in the bed. “Are you decent - are you wearing pyjamas under there?” The girl nodded meekly. “You come with me then.” She turned to Lois. “I trust you can deal with this lot until his teacher gets here?” She said it as though there was a strong possibility that Lois couldn’t.  
Flushing, Lois retorted angrily, “Of course....”  
Thudding feet announced the arrival of the male PE teacher, and Rowan and her new charge swept out without waiting to hear her reply.

 

She sat the girl down at her own desk in her room. “Can I get you a drink?” she asked, but the girl just shook her head. Rowan slid a sheet of paper across to her, and a pen.  
“Chocolate?” Another shake. “What’s your name?”  
“Jessica - Jess mostly. I don’t want any fuss,” the girl said quietly. “I shouldn’t have screamed. If the light was on I’d have seen….. He didn’t do anything really, he jumped out as soon as he - he realised - and I yelled.”  
“Well,, write it down just as it happened,” said Rowan firmly. “The school will sort it out after that.”  
“What do you think they’ll do?”  
“I don’t know how they’ll deal with the other girls. But they’ll have to inform your parents.”  
“They won’t care.” She said it flatly and quite matter-of-factly. She bent her head and started writing. Rowan felt relief that the kid was now dry-eyed and being resigned and sensible. She left her to it for a minute, and when she looked back at her found that she had stopped writing and was gazing at Rowan’s board of photos.  
Noticing Rowan’s eye on her, she asked shyly, “Sorry. How - how do you know Ginty McKinley?”  
“My sister.”  
Jess’s eyes became suddenly round and respectful. Rowan realised that by virtue of being related to _Ginty_ she had just been transformed from scary stranger to wondrous being.  
“O - oh! I - I think she’s brilliant. Sienna Sky is absolutely gorgeous, isn’t he? Is she taking him to Badminton this year?”  
Rowan blinked slightly. She was aware that Ginty’s own horse was called Sienna Sky but not much else. “I wouldn’t know,” she answered. “We don’t see much of each other.”  
The girl had the sense to leave the obvious question alone. “Next year,” she said instead, “When I’m sixteen and can leave school, I’m going to write and see if she needs a working pupil. That’s how she started, isn’t it?”  
“True,” said Rowan, very neutral. “Have you finished writing that?”  
“Oh, no.” She wrote in silence again. It wasn’t long before she pushed the finished sheet across to Rowan.  
Rowan glanced through it. “Why do you think they did it” she asked. “Have they got it in for you, or are they just naturally evil?”  
Jess looked surprised. She clearly wasn’t used to teachers speaking their minds so bluntly. She shrugged. “It can be anything if they want to pick on someone. But they’ve got this stupid thing going on now of pretending I’m a lesbian and calling me a d - a dyke. They probably thought it would be funny for me to have a boy in my bed …”  
Rowan thought back to Kingscote, where it was almost de rigueur in the younger forms to be ‘cracked’ on someone, until going up the years one hit the subtle point at which it suddenly became not ok at all.  
“I’m not,” said Jess. “At least, not as far as I know. It wouldn’t bother me if I was. They just picked on it because I had pictures of girls - women really - on my walls, instead of boys from pop groups or whatever.” Rowan looked a question. “But they were just riders with their horses mostly - because I want to _be_ like them - event riders, you know.”  
“If horses are your thing, why are you on a skiing trip?” asked Rowan, idly, then as Jess frowned slightly, added, “Not that it’s any of my business, of course.”  
“I have to be somewhere,” Jess answered. “Daddy’s got to shag his secretary, and Mum’s busy ‘finding' herself." She didn’t sound at all self-pitying, which made Rowan warm to her.  
“Were you sharing the bedroom with those two?” School parties were always put up in three or four bedded rooms. Jess nodded. “I’ll see if there’s a spare single room you can have.”

XXX

 

It didn’t take Rowan long to get Jess transferred to another room, and see her safely installed. When she returned to her own room, hoping that all the fuss was dealt with for the night, she found Lois hovering in the corridor.  
“Can we discuss what happened?” Lois asked in a tight, polite voice. “And how we’re going to deal with it?”  
“I should imagine that’s up to your school and the boy’s school, isn’t it?” answered Rowan. “It’s not really a matter for the hotel. Unless we decide it was a criminal act and get the police involved?”  
“Goodness no! I’m sure there’s no need for that!” said Lois hastily.  
“You’d better come in here,” said Rowan, indicating her room. She really didn’t want to invite Lois in, but neither did she want to stand talking in the corridor.  
Once inside, both perched rather warily on either side of the table, Lois gave one of her quick, nervous laughs, and said seemingly lightly, “I don’t suppose the school will want to be much bothered - with all this.”  
Rowan had the distinct sense that it was Lois who would much rather not have the school bothered. “I would have thought the parents need to be contacted and asked to come and remove their daughters immediately,” she said. Lois flinched. “The other girl’s parents may well want to take formal action.” No need to reveal to Lois that Jess’s parents probably wouldn’t care - that was something she ought to know herself. Lois was supposed to be her teacher, after all.  
She suspected that Jess was the sort of pupil that Lois didn’t notice much, probably preferring to pay attention to the ones that flattered and played her, and then bitched behind her back.  
“The school won’t want any adverse publicity about this,” said Lois.  
“Well, as I said, from our point of view, the situation is dealt with,” said Rowan, coldly. Did Lois really imagine that _she_ was going to go running around telling tales? “You’ll have to monitor those two closely from now on, and I imagine they’ll be excluded from any future school trips?”  
“Possibly. Their parents are - rather influential.”  
Rowan looked at the expression on Lois’s face, stiff and embarrassed and anxious. She felt oddly embarrassed herself. If not for this random chance Lois would never have re-entered her life, and she need never have thought of her again; now she felt uncomfortable, as if she really was indulging in the gloating thoughts that Lois clearly assumed she was feeling.  
Lois broke the silence. “So - so you left the farm, then?” She forced a smile. “How long have you been working here?”  
“Oh, some years,” answered Rowan. “How are you enjoying teaching?”  
“Oh, well, it’s mixed, I suppose. Sherington is a very good school,” said Lois, and then as if aware of how doubtful she sounded, added, “Of course, it’s incredibly rewarding when one sees the teams doing well.”  
Not the most convincing of answers, thought Rowan. She felt no inclination to tell Lois anything about her own life, but Lois persisted. “How are all the family?” she asked.  
“They’re all very well.”  
“And Nicola - how’s she getting on?” Rowan sensed a curious intentness behind the seemingly casual conversation.  
“Nicola? She’s fine. As is Lawrie - and Ann and Ginty and Karen,” Rowan said pointedly.  
Lois smiled again, “I used to think that Nicola would have made a good PE teacher.”  
“Hardly,” said Rowan, without thinking. “She went to _Oxford_ after all. She could aim a lot higher than that.”  
Lois’s face took on a frozen, crumpled look. If it had been anyone but Lois, Rowan might have felt guilty.  
“Oh, well, yes, I suppose so,” said Lois with a forced laugh. “Did she become Games Captain in the end?”  
“No,” said Rowan, casually, because this was an old story and no longer interesting. But she was shaken by the expression on Lois’s face, fleeting and instantly suppressed, she had smirked, not just with pleasure but with _triumph_. Rowan felt gripped by her sixteen year old self’s primeval rage, of wanting to grab her rival by the hair and shake her, punch her, wipe that awful expression off her face for ever.  
But it was not for nothing that she learned to hide her emotions; hatred and anger could be slipped behind a mask just as well as unhappiness. She said, with deliberate calm, “Miss Keith had one of her nutty moments that year - apparently she blathered on about how 'school sport wasn’t just about netball', and she gave it to some girl in the B form who captained the hockey team.”  
“That was a shame,” answered Lois, almost managing to sound regretful.  
“She always did choose the oddest people to do things,” Rowan remarked. “It was never the _best_ person for the job.” Lois looked discomfited.  
Rowan had left the door well ajar as they talked, so she could keep half an eye on the corridor. A gentle tap on the door now made her look up.  
Her friend Anna stood framed in the doorway. She had beautiful dark, curly hair and olive skin, the looks which had made Rowan wrongly assume that she was Italian when she had first met her. She looked with curiosity at Lois.  
Rowan supposed she should introduce them. “We were at school together,” she explained, reluctantly. “We’ve been sorting out an incident which happened with some of the kids.”  
“Ah, well I should leave you to it then,” said Anna. “I’ll see you tomorrow then, Ro.”  
Rowan got rid of Lois soon after, but she was left feeling inordinately cross, not only because of all the fuss earlier, but because she had missed out on having a nightcap with Anna.

 

XXXXXX

 

The next day conditions and weather were perfect for skiing. One of the runs had to stay closed because of a previous unsafe snowfall, but apart from that the slopes were busy, the skies were blue, and Rowan managed to go all day without seeing Lois. She was rather hoping it could stay that way all week, and then with a bit of luck, she need never see her ever again.

 

It was early evening. The various different school groups had come in from the slopes, consumed vast amounts of hot buttered toast and chocolate cake, and mostly drifted off to bedrooms, the TV lounge, poolroom or bars before the evening’s food and entertainment started.  
Rowan, having sorted out a few minor problems - all part of her day’s work - was just crossing the lobby area when she was accosted by Jessica and a young teacher. She introduced herself hurriedly as the junior PE teacher, accompanying the Sherington Ladies party.  
“I hate to bother you because it may turn out to be nothing. But I’m quite concerned about Miss Sanger. No-one’s seen her come in yet.” Hazel Browning was young, with a cheerful, sensible face; wearing a sweatshirt with the school badge on.  
Rowan was irritated. There were any number of places that people could go beyond the hotel after skiing: cafes, bars and restaurants. In general the school parties stayed within the main building, and their teachers were expected to be with them; it was irresponsible of Lois not to be there, but not alarming. But she listened politely to Miss Browning’s account.  
“Miss Sanger said it had been rather a slow afternoon, what with so many of our girls being beginners, and would I mind seeing them all in, while she had a go down one of the faster runs,” started Miss Browning. Rowan wondered idly if Lois often dumped jobs on her junior while swanning off herself; she rather suspected that she did. And was it only because Jess, a pupil, was present that she kept referring to her as ‘Miss Sanger’ rather than using her first name?  
“Well, that was fine, only she still hadn’t come in by the time we’d all had tea, and it’s getting dark. So I’ve been asking all the other groups that came in after us if they’d seen her, before I bothered you, and no-one had. Until one of the boys’ teachers said he had seen her, and apparently she’d said she was going down the Black Run.” She stopped, and looked at Rowan with an expectant look on her face.  
“The Black Run’s closed,” said Rowan. “She’d have seen that it’s signed off before she got there.”  
“Yes, you’d think so,” agreed Miss Browning.  
“I imagine she met up with someone, and has gone to one of the cafes,” suggested Rowan.  
“Maybe - though we are expected to stay in the same building as the girls in the evening.” Belatedly realising that Jess was hearing all this, Miss Browning turned to her, saying, “Thanks, Jess. You can go up and get changed now.”  
Rowan pondered. Miss Browning didn’t look like the type to have panics over nothing. Once Jess was out of earshot, Miss Browning added, “She was a bit - edgy - today. I think she was worrying about the behaviour last night. She does get rather rattled about things - if you understand me? I’m afraid she might not have been quite _concentrating_ \- if she was skiing somewhere on her own…”  
Rowan sighed, inwardly thinking, damn - blow - blast and bloody hell! “I’ll put the word out,” she said. “We won’t start a full-scale search yet, but I’ll put a call out on the radios for everyone who’s still out there to keep an eye out. I‘m sure she‘ll just be having a hot chocolate somewhere.”  
She did all that she could short of calling out a search party. An hour later, the school parties were gathering in the big dining room for dinner, and there was still no sign of Lois.  
It was ridiculous to be bothered about the blasted woman but still … Miss Browning’s words echoed - ‘edgy …. worrying … rattled ..’  
Last night’s incident would have to be reported back to the school. There would certainly be consequences. Although no-one could say that Lois had done anything actually wrong - staff weren’t expected to patrol outside their students’ rooms all night long - the head might well think that with a different teacher in charge the incident wouldn’t have happened at all.  
Some teachers’ authority extended beyond their physical presence. No child would have dared to pull last night’s stunt if Miss Cromwell had been in the building, thought Rowan. She herself had never been one of Miss Cromwell’s favourites, but that hadn’t stopped her rather liking the old battle-axe.  
The girls’ behaviour last night certainly cast a doubt over Lois’s ability to inspire respect or maintain control. Even if there was no official reprimand there would be a question mark against her record.  
If Lois was anxious about the consequences of last night, she might well think that some sort of drama would deflect criticism; an accident, a near-death rescue, a disappearance, the trail of a pair of skis disappearing off the side of the mountain …….. Rowan realised that she was letting her thoughts run away with her, but having thought them, she couldn’t shake them off.

XXX

 

Anna walked into the office, and seeing Rowan’s frown, immediately asked what was up. Rowan told her the story, then said that she was going to go out and look into the all the nearby cafes before doing anything else. Anna nodded, then said she’d see what she could do and went off in a different direction.  
Rowan pulled on her outdoor layers and set off. The cafes and bars, cheerful and bustling at this time of evening were inviting, but there was no sign of Lois in any of them.  
She returned to the hotel, and checked with Miss Browning that Lois hadn’t returned while she’d been out. She hadn’t. So there was nothing for it but to put on skiing gear and go out and have a look.  
The moon was full, which was lucky. She would hardly need her head-torch. But as she skied slowly across the silvery slope below the hotel, she heard her name being called and saw a figure returning across the snow. It was Anna.  
“What are you doing?” Rowan asked her.  
“I’ve been down the Black Run..”  
“You’ve done _what?_ ” asked Rowan, incredulous. “Are you insane?”  
“Nonsense. Who knows the mountain better than me? And weren’t _you_ just about to do the same thing?”  
Rowan reluctantly admitted that she had been going to. In fact, she felt slightly disappointed that she needn’t now. Anna was glowing and flushed from her moonlit run. The moonlight cast both their shadows together across the snow, almost touching as they talked.  
“Someone had been down there before me,” Anna told her. “I followed a trail all the way down. But whoever it was got safely to the bottom, and then the trail joined the busy trail to the bottom of the lifts. I couldn’t follow it any more. So wherever she went from there, who knows? But I can tell you she’s not lying in a heap anywhere down that run.”  
“That’s something,” said Rowan. “But you really shouldn’t have. What if something had happened to you?”  
“Why are you so cross?” asked Anna, surprised.  
“I’m not.” But Anna was gazing at her with a quizzical half-smile. “Well, I am. But only because it would have been stupid if you’d had an accident out there - looking for _her!_ ”  
“She is your old friend though?”  
“ _No!_ She’s not!”  
“You said she was your friend from school,” protested Anna gently.  
“No, I didn’t. I said we were at school together. But we weren’t friends. We couldn’t stand each other. She was more like an enemy!”  
“Ah,” said Anna, on a long note of relief. “Perhaps we should go inside and you can tell me all about it?”

XXX

 

Rowan found Miss Browning again, and reassured her that Lois’s legs hadn’t been found sticking out of a mound of snow. Then she joined Anna in the office. Anna had brought a bottle of brandy and poured generous slugs into their hot chocolates.  
“So what did this Lois do - when you were at school?” asked Anna, curiously.  
Rowan thought hard. “It wasn’t so much that she _did_ anything. Not to me, anyway. She was the worst sort of person to be on teams with, taking all the credit when it went well and making excuses when it didn’t. She didn’t like me, because, well, I saw through her, I suppose. But it was my sister that she really had it in for.” Rowan paused, musing. “I never knew if it was because I’d left school before she had a chance to get at me so she took it out on Nick, or if she just hated her too.”  
“What did she do to her?”  
“She was always trying to queer her pitch one way or another.”  
“Sorry, what is queering the pitch?”  
“Oh, cricket, sorry.” (She had once tried to explain the rules of cricket to Anna, who had been frankly bored and disbelieving. “But it sounds so dull?”)  
“She told lies, mostly,“ Rowan explained. “Things that staff would believe and that would get her out of trouble and Nick into trouble. Or get Nick pushed off teams she should have been in.”  
“Your sister Nicola?” asked Anna. “The one who went to Oxford?”  
“Yes,” replied Rowan, pleasantly surprised. She didn’t often talk about any of the family; Anna must have remembered that detail from a very long ago conversation.  
“And the one who’s married to the very sexy rock star, no?”  
“I suppose you could call him that.”  
“So, this Lois didn’t exactly manage to ruin her _whole_ life, then?”  
Rowan laughed, recognising it as exactly the sort of thing she would say herself; as in fact, happened rather often with Anna.

 

XXXXXX

 

Lois returned in the morning. Rowan was in the lobby shepherding out a class of beginners and seeing her, Lois attempted to breeze past, without quite meeting her eye.  
“Where the hell were _you_ last night?” growled Rowan, causing the nearest child to look back at her in some surprise.  
“Last night?” Lois gave one of the quick, ingratiating smiles that had been charming when she was a girl. “Pas devant les enfants!”  
“You _what?_ ”  
“Well, let’s just say, I found something more entertaining than the inter-school’s pop quiz, if you know what I mean.” She faltered slightly, her artificial chumminess failing, as Rowan‘s icy gaze struck her.  
“Didn’t it occur to you that you were meant to be in charge of a group of children?”  
“Oh, I knew they had Miss Browning; she’s quite capable for one night!”  
“And that people might be out searching for you? Taking risks themselves? Because the last you were seen was going towards a run that was closed?”  
Too late Lois realised that Rowan was absolutely furious, and that her insinuating approach had been the wrong one.  
“Oh, I know, I realised too late. But it was fine, only I slipped a little at the bottom, and twisted my ankle.”  
“You twisted your ankle?” asked Rowan, very faintly.  
“Yes, and I was coming back, only I could only go quite slowly, and then Sven came along.”  
“Sven, skiing instructor Sven?” asked Rowan. Sven was well-known for providing apres-ski activities for bored, single women. The ultimate sympathetic type, but usually for one night only.  
“Yes, he said he was one of the coaches. Only he was so kind, helping me all the way back, it would have been rude _not_ to stop for a drink when he offered. And by the time I noticed the time, it seemed so late it was hardly worth coming back. I knew Miss Browning would have everyone safely in bed.”  
“And Sven had you safely in bed?”  
“Well, yes, he did rather!” Lois tried to nudge Rowan and laugh girlishly, but it dried on her lips.  
“I suppose he ministered to your twisted ankle?”  
“Oh, um, yes, it’s _much_ better this morning. It‘s amazing what a good night‘s rest can do!”  
“Isn’t it,” agreed Rowan stiffly, and pushed on outside. Torn between being outraged and wanting to laugh out loud, she felt utterly gob-smacked. The desperate neediness of the one-night-stand disgusted her. Or did Lois think that she was being terrifically liberated and adventurous? On a school trip with a pack of teenage girls liable to gossip about her every move?  
One of the waiting children asked her a question twice before she came to herself and responded. “Yes, let’s go!” she said cheerfully, breathing in the clear mountain air and lowering her goggles against the glittering snow.

 

XXXXXX

 

It was the evening before Rowan’s day off and Anna had brought a bottle up to her room for a nightcap.  
“I am glad that woman’s gone,” she said, poring Rowan another finger of brandy.  
The group from Sherington Ladies’ College had departed earlier that day.  
“Me too. If I never see that woman again it will be a day too soon,” Rowan replied, enjoying the relaxing feeling spreading through her limbs, partly the brandy, partly the prickly feeling caused by Lois’s presence easing away..  
Anna looked at her thoughtfully. “When I looked into your room that night and saw you talking to her - there was so much tension in the air between you….. I thought, ah - here I have found the reason.”  
Anna had very striking eyes, dark and intensely glowing, framed with very long, curling lashes ..’come-to-bed’ eyes, thought Rowan, unexpectedly. “The reason?” she asked.  
“The reason you are always ignoring me.”  
“I don’t ignore you!” The very idea was impossible; apart from Anna being the only person she truly considered a friend, she was gorgeous. She could never help just _looking_ at her.  
“Yes, you do.” Rowan gazed at Anna, with a dawning sense of something wonderful about to unfold. Anna continued softly. “You ignore what is here between us.” She reached across and placed her hand very gently on Rowan’s lower arm, resting on the table. It was like a current passing through her, a feeling that earthed itself somewhere deep and intimate. “So - I had to think, either Rowan is not interested in that - or, there is something else?”  
Rowan found her voice. “No. There’s no reason. Nothing at all.”  
“So, are you always this slow, Rowan?” Anna asked, a smile lurking at the back of her eyes..  
“I suppose I have been rather.”  
Anna ran her hand gently up the inside of Rowan’s arm. She was aware of Anna’s closeness, a heady scent of brandy and fragrance and warm skin. Her own skin tingled as she felt the caress of Anna’s lips against her own cheek. She turned her head so that their lips could meet next.  
“You can tell me to stop whenever you want,” murmured Anna. But time passed, and it seemed Rowan never did want her to stop.


End file.
